Sad pumpkin pie and an awesome bike ride

Got up at 6:30 this morning to roll out some dough and make a pumpkin pie for the internship holiday party...and proved to myself that I should not bake at 6:30 in the morning, because my crust slumped and there were weird globs of oil on the top of the finished pie (puree, milk, sugar, spice, eggs...how do you mess that up??).  To console myself, I ate some (homemade!) corn muffins with jam and yogurt and watched several YouTube videos about how to properly flute a crust.   Next time it'll be perfect--PERFECT, I tell you.

I need to get away from this boring holiday baking kick and come up with something more creative than pecan or pumpkin.  Maybe some sort of chocolate peanut butter thing....or this concoction, which my sister (who happens to be pregnant and is probably in need of chocolate) sent to me.  Post about something fabulous to come.

A less-than-eventful bike ride to L'Enfant today.  For the past 5 years, when I lived in the vicinity of AU, I took Massachusetts Avenue downtown. Even though I moved to Glover Park, I still do.  It's a love-hate relationship between us, but I'm familiar with all of its quirks and foibles. Wisconsin through Georgetown would be easier, but the idea of biking through Georgetown at rush hour sounds less-than-fun.  I'm sure there's a way to do it on the back streets, but my sense of direction being as crappy as it is, I don't know what that way would be.  I'll work on finding a route so I have something interesting to post about.  

Lots of bikers along 15th today.  I tried to gun it for the light at I St., which always changes about 1 second before I can make it through.  Sometimes you can run it at the red because there's a turn arrow, but there was a gaggle of pedestrians making ready to cross.  So I stopped, as I should have, but a CaBi biker behind me dinged his bell at the last second, apparently trying to pass me, then grumbled and huffed loudly when I stopped.  Not really sure what happened there or how/why he thought he could pass me OR why he was following me closely enough to be annoyed that I stopped OR that he couldn't seem to see the red light ahead.  I just looked straight ahead and stayed stopped at the stop line.

<slightly self-righteous rant>

It annoys the crap out of me when cyclists and/or cars pull into a crosswalk without stopping at the stop line.  That's why they invented stop lines, so that moving vehicles don't mow down pedestrians.  So yeah, inch into the crosswalk if you have to, but make sure people are out of the way before you do it.  Bikers also tend to turn right on 15th just past the White House when pedestrians have the right-of-way there, and the pedestrians have to stop or jump out of the way. It just seems like arrogance to me. Being on a bike does not mean that you have the right-of-way at all times.  Bikes have brakes for a reason, so be prepared and willing to stop once in awhile.

</slightly self-righteous rant>

Maybe I'm overly cautious about pedestrians and cars.  If it explains anything, I spent 4 years as a bicycle tour guide on the National Mall, so I'm pretty excellent at being patient and people-dodging while being somewhat polite about it. (Unless a tourist tells me to get off a sidewalk on the Mall.  I bristle, turn around, and inform them that the sidewalks on the Mall are technically considered shared-use trails, so look up the traffic laws of places you visit before making stupid remarks, asshole).  I am also good at making loud comments at rulebreakers (i.e. "Oh, did you not see that glaring red light in front of you?") and then turning around and doing stupid shit myself.  I guess none of us is perfect.

The perils of riding a bike

There will be no place in this post to brag about my new wheels on my Gary Fisher Lane, so I'm going to do that first.  Velocity A23s with DT Swiss spokes.  Do I know much about bike wheels?  No.  Do I know that these are AWESOME?  Yes.  Recommended by our shop mechanic and bought by me on super duper clearance.  Cha-ching!  

I live up near the Cathedral and generally commute to 12th and Pennsylvania...sometimes to Alexandria...sometimes to L'Enfant...sometimes to Glover Park....sometimes to Friendship Heights...so if, while I am bitching about this street or that street, my route seems very erratic, it's because I have three separate jobs (well, one is an internship).    

The best word with which to describe today is "yikes".  I walked out the door at 8:19 AM, and Wisconsin Avenue was a parking lot.  Massachusetts Avenue was even worse.  Perhaps it was a motorcade or something, but I heard no sirens...anyway, I wimped out and took the sidewalk down Mass.  Sometimes I try and ride down it in the street, but it was pretty much impassable today, and I like not being stressed.  The sidewalk has its own share of stressers, but fewer that could kill me. 

Can we talk about Dupont Circle for a second?  And how pedestrians there absolutely suck?  People usually cut in front of me when I have the light on the inner loop, and at the south part of the circle where the inner and outer loops intersect.  One time, I hit an old lady who was crossing in a pack of (pseudo folk etymology heads-up!) sheeple.  She was behind a tall man, so I thought I was in the clear when he moved, but I didn't see her.  Fortunately, she was fine, admitted it was her fault, and then she asked me for directions.  Weird.

I'm also beginning to have serious problems with the 15th Street cycle track.  A friend of mine once remarked that, "Cycle tracks must exist in heaven," and I must say, I profoundly disagree.  Today, a lady cut the light where the road turns into Vermont Avenue while I was going one way and some other guy was coming the other way.  She effectively blocked both of us at the same time and said, "Oh, sorry, I always forget that's there!"  Ughhh.  Then I tried to stop for a couple of pedestrians who I thought were going to step out in front of me (not at a crosswalk), neglected to signal the stop, and the guy behind me had to slam on his brakes.  I apologized and explained why I stopped...fortunately, he was nice about it.  He wasn't even following me too closely, so I can't really fault him.   

To contrast with that, my coworker and I were riding down E St. today, and that cycle lane has its own set of annoyances.  Namely, cars parked or driving in the bike lane (that site, while slightly overly territorial, makes a good point).  There's that ongoing debate about which side of parked cars the bike lanes should be positioned in, and I'm not sure which side I'm on.  You're really in dooring territory either way (unless, like in Montreal, you have a thicker barrier between the street and the bike lane), and when you're next to the sidewalk, you have the added hazard of clueless pedestrians.  I still encounter people parked in the 15th Street lane, and joggers use it all the time.  

There's also the alternative option of positioning the lane in the middle of a busy, wide road (a la Pennsylvania Avenue).  The biggest problem with that, besides the pedestrian issue, are cars making U-turns in front of cyclists.  I've been knocked off my bike once and had the shit scared out of me several times.   Again, concrete barriers would help, but those are (probably) expensive and would (likely) annoy people.  Though they would be ten times better than those flimsy plastic things they position every 100 feet that always get knocked down...

Is it an infrastructure problem?  Or is the collective unconscious of DC just not attuned to the presence of bicycles?  Will this get better with time?  What does anyone who reads this think?

Next blog will hopefully be a cooking one.  I am moving to Glover Park, so all of my kitchen stuff is packed, but I am in charge of pie for Thanksgiving...I'm thinking pumpkin cream cheese pie....